January 18, 2005

Landscapes for Thinking

Have spent last year having adventures - have been sometimes ordered, sometimes disordered, sometimes fluid, sometimes fixed, have been an agent of change and a subject of change. Have gained many new insights through adventures experienced and yet in another sense remain in equilibrium.

Much like the year before then …. all memory and desire stuff with thinking folded in afterwards… Well now you mention it …

Can we create some kind of collective consciousness that explains why we are here/ explains the meaning of being alive/ explains what it is to live? Henry Miller reckons the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Reading the second phase media response to the tsunami – explorations of what it is to be and stay alive sees media calls for improved “prediction”. Predicting earthquake, and land-shake, predicting earth-quiver and land -shiver requires us to establish contrast and affinity, to explore landscapes for thinking.

“Landscape is a work of the mind, its scenery is built as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.”, (Schama 1995)

Can thinking be stratified? Can thinking be mapped? Can thinking be reduced to points, lines and areas? And if it can, just what is the relative position, elevation, textures, shape, colour, orientation, pattern, size, and value of thinking with regard to student learning outcomes? Are mountain ranges, subduction trenches, tectonic plates, and mid-ocean ridges useful metaphors for student thinking? And if they are, can we create landscapes for thinking?

And and and if we create landscapes for thinking, what topographies can we measure?

Comments

Landscapes for Thinking

Have spent last year having adventures - have been sometimes ordered, sometimes disordered, sometimes fluid, sometimes fixed, have been an agent of change and a subject of change. Have gained many new insights through adventures experienced and yet in another sense remain in equilibrium.

Much like the year before then …. all memory and desire stuff with thinking folded in afterwards… Well now you mention it …

Can we create some kind of collective consciousness that explains why we are here/ explains the meaning of being alive/ explains what it is to live? Henry Miller reckons the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Reading the second phase media response to the tsunami – explorations of what it is to be and stay alive sees media calls for improved “prediction”. Predicting earthquake, and land-shake, predicting earth-quiver and land -shiver requires us to establish contrast and affinity, to explore landscapes for thinking.

“Landscape is a work of the mind, its scenery is built as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.”, (Schama 1995)

Can thinking be stratified? Can thinking be mapped? Can thinking be reduced to points, lines and areas? And if it can, just what is the relative position, elevation, textures, shape, colour, orientation, pattern, size, and value of thinking with regard to student learning outcomes? Are mountain ranges, subduction trenches, tectonic plates, and mid-ocean ridges useful metaphors for student thinking? And if they are, can we create landscapes for thinking?

And and and if we create landscapes for thinking, what topographies can we measure?